"At first, the results were somewhat encouraging: The men "are attracted to women who are smarter than them when she is psychologically distant," lead author Lora Park told Mic. The "psychologically distant" jargon in this context means that the men found the smart targets (i.e. women) attractive in the abstract, i.e. from a distance. Which is great. These men appreciated a girl with a brain. Awesome.
Saturday, September 10, 2016
"Apparently, Men Are Threatened by Smart Women, Because of Course They Are"
Friday, September 9, 2016
"Calling Out "Activist Tourism" and the "Progressive" Mainstream"
"At least one issue here is the definition of "activism." Like "organizer" and many others, this term can almost have no meaning. If [President] Obama was a "community organizer" what then what was Huey Newton? It seems that this moment lends itself to a kind of self-indulgent adventurism - or what Baltimore-based member of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle Dayvon Love has called something like "activist tourism."
I often feel the lines between activist, organizer and event planner are more than blurred; they are all but indistinguishable. Is activism getting arrested in pre-arranged spectacles? Is activism sustained organization building? Is one who advocates support for "lesser evils" in corporate/commercial elections an activist? Is one who writes essays or talks radical shit on his radio show an activist? Can an activist be pro-state? Or go to Starbucks?...
The only way I know to correct for the potential in all of us to engage in ego-tripping radicalism is to belong to organizations that have protocols set for membership, public speaking and behavior. A revolutionary checks and balances, of sorts. And since it is clear we are losing, it should be understood that we have many adjustments to make"
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32920-calling-out-activist-tourism-and-the-progressive-mainstream
I really appreciate reading these thoughts on the definition of activism.
Also on museums:
"So first of course, all museums, art and culture are political. They do not exist in a vacuum. I've always thought that, in addition to the point you raise about the geopolitics involved in the Holocaust Memorial, that such a museum is acceptable to this state because it is often (not entirely accurately) disassociated from those crimes. "Those Germans did that." Plus, the US has reconstructed the history of that war positioning themselves as heroes (as opposed to, for instance, the Russians who truly defeated Hitler).
No true memorial to the Afrikan Maafa [the atrocities committed against African people through colonialism, slavery and ongoing racial oppression] could be erected here because its impact would demand immediate - even violent - revolutionary action."
Thursday, September 8, 2016
"An African Spiritual Art Form Caught In Time-Lapse"
"the project looks to tackle a number of questions about African spirituality, such as “Why the idea of African spirituality is generally characterized as other or evil, when Greek or Roman mythology is not portrayed in the same light? Why is African spirituality still seen as primitive and backwards, and how could we make a film that reverses these stigmas and shows the relevance of African spirituality in the present day and even into the future?"...
The ritual of painting one’s ‘ori’ on them is a deeply spiritual ceremony between the artist and the canvas which is a person. It really doesn’t get much deeper than that. It’s the most powerful spiritual experience between both parties. Ori in Yoruba literally means head but is so much more than that. It also refers, in the spiritual sense to one’s intuition, destiny (ayanmo), essence, and their consciousness that’s part of them, and is also an Orisha unto it’s own, meaning that the person is a God or Goddess them self. It is one of the most powerful parts of the Yoruba faith. In the Western world you would describe it as your soul + destiny + essence and more = Ori. It’s as deep as it gets."
http://www.okayafrica.com/news/laolu-senbanjo-ori-ritual-body-art/
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
"The Life and Death of Jamaica High School"
"There are two broadly competing narratives about school closure. The one commonly told by teachers, students, and many parents at underperforming schools centers on a lack of financial and material resources, which insures that the schools will be unable to meet even minimum standards. Strongly connected to this version is a belief that closure functions as a kind of veiled union-busting: shutting a school allows reformers to sidestep contracts and remove long-term teachers.
Reformers view closure as a necessary corrective to what they see as bloated bureaucracies, inept teachers, and unaccountable unions. They argue that urban schools are often too large to give students the attention they need...
The narrative of individual ascent in America often elides the many frail contingencies that make success possible. In the late seventies, my father found it increasingly difficult to compete with larger electrical contractors. Then, in 1981, my oldest brother—who had served in Vietnam, had come home addicted to heroin, and had been clean for several years—died, one of the earliest victims of AIDS. My father’s business collapsed amid the grief that followed. The contingencies piled up. We moved from the yellow house into a second-floor apartment on a dead-end street in Bricktown, a forgettable stretch of South Jamaica alongside the Long Island Rail Road.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/class-notes-annals-of-education-jelani-cobb
An America that doesn't exist anymore.
FB: "Ninety years ago, the City of New York broke ground on a huge, beautiful building as a symbol of its commitment to public education. Last year, it closed the school that the building housed, purportedly for the same reasons. The people who gathered angrily outside Jamaica High School weren’t really protesting its closing; they were protesting the complex of history, policy, poverty, and race that had brought it about."
Reformers view closure as a necessary corrective to what they see as bloated bureaucracies, inept teachers, and unaccountable unions. They argue that urban schools are often too large to give students the attention they need...
The narrative of individual ascent in America often elides the many frail contingencies that make success possible. In the late seventies, my father found it increasingly difficult to compete with larger electrical contractors. Then, in 1981, my oldest brother—who had served in Vietnam, had come home addicted to heroin, and had been clean for several years—died, one of the earliest victims of AIDS. My father’s business collapsed amid the grief that followed. The contingencies piled up. We moved from the yellow house into a second-floor apartment on a dead-end street in Bricktown, a forgettable stretch of South Jamaica alongside the Long Island Rail Road.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/class-notes-annals-of-education-jelani-cobb
An America that doesn't exist anymore.
FB: "Ninety years ago, the City of New York broke ground on a huge, beautiful building as a symbol of its commitment to public education. Last year, it closed the school that the building housed, purportedly for the same reasons. The people who gathered angrily outside Jamaica High School weren’t really protesting its closing; they were protesting the complex of history, policy, poverty, and race that had brought it about."
“I LOVED MAKING BOYS CRY”
"To all the men who grew up as little boys in a society where you couldn’t feel, couldn’t cry, couldn’t be vulnerable. I’m sorry.
https://thsppl.com/i-loved-making-boys-cry-6ff123d36f0d
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
"Trump, fascism, Putin and Wikileaks: the anatomy of a liberal nervous breakdown"
"Liberals are clearly not principled anti-fascists, the geopolitical compromises are too numerous to count, and there is an obvious cynical PR/fundraising logic to the fascist threat: ‘Can you spare $5 to defeat fascism?’ However, liberals are emotionally invested in the idea that they are the ones who can beat back the scourge of fascism. They construct anti-fascism as a class project but self-identify as the class of elites and experts that fascism uses to obfuscate actual class struggle...
What has been remarkable about the liberal political commentariat’s reaction to Trump’s outrages and Bernie Sanders’ successes has been its collective nature. Sanders’ social-democratic candidacy elicited horror as the progressive parallel to the Trump movement in the liberal nerve centers of Vox, Politico and Slate. The uniformity of this reaction in the liberal media and millennial online journalism spheres has been most perplexing as the Sanders campaign was objectively an extraordinary story. Thomas Frank convincingly advances the notion in his new book that American liberals function as a class, not in objective economic terms but in the devotion of professionals to the meritocracy. These are the people whose hearts bleed for diversity in boardrooms and Hollywood blockbusters, who believe entrepreneurs should get student loan debt forgiveness and that equality will be achieved through inner city youths learning how to code or attending a free performance of Hamilton. In constructing progressive politics as the combination of affect and technocracy, as opposed to ideology, struggle and justice, the rebellion of the Sanders youth and the surging fascism of Trump both represent the grubby politics of street fighting...
until liberalism can antagonistically define itself with a genuine left conscience it will continue to be wracked by the fascist nightmare."
It's real though - what is the definition of "liberal"? "Democrat"? What are the principles and values, what unites people under these terms? To me, as someone who grew up in aggressively liberal Democratic territory, I have a lot of trouble articulating what we are without leaning on comparisons to conservatives and Republicans.
And that flexibility definitely helps liberal/Democrat politicians, who can create new definitions that motivate people to either become rabid supporters of some policy or politician or fear losing their identities.
FB: This was an excellent read - can anyone actually define what it means to be a "liberal", or what it is that the Democratic Party stands for?
"Why Do We Admire Mobsters?"
"It's no surprise that family members paint idyllic pictures of their mobster ancestors. Every mobster was also a father, brother, uncle, or grandfather, and—at least theoretically—his villainy didn’t spill over into those roles. The real question is why so many other people feel the same way. We don’t glamorize all violent crime; no one holds the Son of Sam or Charles Manson in high regard. (It’s hard to imagine their descendants gathering for a celebratory dinner at a steakhouse.) So why are Al Capone, Lansky, Arnold Rothstein, Luciano, and their ilk held up as mythic figures, even heroes of a sort, not just by their families but by the general public? Why are members of the Italian mafia treated more like celebrities than unsavory criminals?...
Social psychologists have long distinguished between “in-groups” and “out-groups.” Out-groups come in different guises. There are some with whom we feel absolutely no affinity; often, we separate ourselves from them by putting them down. But other out-groups are enough like our in-group that, although their identity remains separate from ours, they seem like less of a threat, It is to this second category that the mafia belongs. People who see themselves as “all-American” can be fascinated by Italian mobsters, and even admire them, without worrying that their lives will come into contact with mobsters’ lives...
As long as there isn’t an easy-to-recall, factual reminder that brings us down out of the clouds of romanticism, we can glamorize at will. The lives of serial killers offer those concrete reminders: they lurk in neighborhoods like ours, threatening people who could be us. The mob is more abstract: it’s a shadowy, vague “organization” whose illicit dealings don’t really impinge on us. Abstraction lends itself to psychological distance; specificity kills it."
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/why-do-we-admire-mobsters?intcid=mod-latest&utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email
There is a bunch more here that I didn't quote; it pulls in a lot of pieces of answers and makes me think about mythology and groups. I love the idea of two different types of out groups
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